Let’s Get You Up To Speed, 2016.

Lately, I’ve been posting some pretty off the wall stuff on this blog. I haven’t really taken the time to give you, my loyal readers and search engine crawlers, an actual update as to what I’ve really been doing on the internet. Also, just a few things I wanted to share.

I’ve launched, reorganized, and tinkered with quite few things… So let’s try and run them all down here. I’ll probably leave something out, as I’m just writing this on a whim — no planning or whatnot.

Matt Fowler’s Internets — First and foremost, you might have noticed the focus of this blog has completely changed. This has been a gradual change, and has been elevating for years now. This once started out as a place for me to write tech reviews, tips, etc. Now it’s become just a place for me to post whatever I feel is necessary at the time — like most personal blogs. I never should have tried to merge the two. This was always just my personal blog, but I tried to make something else out of it. Not sure why.

Matt Fowler’s Snaps — I touched base on this a little bit a few posts ago, but never gave any further information. Basically, I am not ready to release my Snapchat handle to the public (yet), but I wanted a way for people to see some clever snaps I came up with that would otherwise die out because of Snapchat’s alleged expiration timer. You won’t see everything that my Snapchat friends do, obviously, but you’ll get the bulk of the best ones. I am trying to keep this updated as much as possible, but I do tend to stray away from it from time to time.

Pajama Pants In Space — This isn’t a new launch, as my little “band” project has been going on for quite some time. However, I finally got rid of the awful design that the page had, and gave it a fresh new look. The content on there right now is pretty sparse, with only a couple of free music downloads, but this will change. Some ideas I have planned is an interactive music player, video content, and possibly weird giveaways for PPIS swag. I also intend to open up some sort of “merch” shop for those who want to support the project. I really only do the music for fun, not profit, but donations are never discouraged. Someone mentioned opening up a Patreon for PPIS…but I don’t think it’s really big enough for that, yet. Plus, from what I understand doing that causes people to become “lobbyists” of sorts — and I hate to be rude, but I don’t want anyone telling me what I can and cannot do with it.

Matt Fowler Network— This project is getting closer and closer each day to launch. When you visit it now you’ll notice (if you’ve even been paying attention) a new design and somewhat of a focus of the direction it’s going in. Of course, me being me, this is all subject to change. This has always been a “experimental video and audio network”, but I’ll most likely start out with audio (podcasting) and branch out from there. I also had an idea to merge Matt Fowler’s Internets with the network, and use mattfowler.biz for something completely different. That idea has been shelved for now.

Matt Fowler’s Things & Stuff — This isn’t the name of a project (at least it’s not yet) but I have the plan to launch a whole bunch of Matt Fowler’s ___ ___ branded ideas. To give you a sneak peak of sorts, Matt Fowler’s Picture Show and Matt Fowler’s Podcasts are two of the strongest ideas I have set out. I guess one might say I’m over using my name a bit, but I might as well — seeing how the domain is what it is.

AudioBoom — This was once called AudioBoo, and I hadn’t used it in so long they changed the name on me. It’s a neat way to record quick little sound bites. Whether it be a personal note, or whatever is on your mind at the time. I was really heavy into this for a few years then suddenly lost interest. Well, that is going to change because I want to get back into recording them! I’ve always enjoyed a “virtual” talk-radio-like experience, and AudioBoo[m] let me do that. Look for me to centralize where these new posts are put, instead of just scattered vicariously throughout my blog, but for now check out my main AudioBoom profile — there’s even a neat subscription option if you are interested.

Live— I haven’t done any kind of real live show since Justin.TV shut down. This was my primary source and I guess I haven’t had the urge to adapt to anything else. I experimented with Periscope a few times, but wasn’t crazy about how it was location-centric. I understand the true use case for Periscope, “show what you are looking at right now” and my idea of a live stream isn’t that. It’s more for personal use, fun, etc.

Security — This also isn’t a launch, but just something I wanted to share. I haven’t figured out why yet, but Matt Fowler Network has been under attack ever since I switched the design. I get IP addresses (Mostly foreign countries) almost daily trying to brute force their way into the backend of the site. I haven’t a clue what they would want with it, especially since the site is just an empty shell right now. Luckily, I have some fairly sophisticated tools I use that are blocking these attempts and even blocking their IP Addresses for a set amount of time until the attackers give up. It has blocked some permanently, but they seem to give up after 24 hrs.. Or it’s the same people just switching servers. Like I said, it’s not a constant battle, but it does happen a lot more often than it should.

Oh I know there is more… I just know it! But, for the life of me I can’t think of anything. I’ll end here because this is plenty to read as it stands.

Oh.. I just dazzled this up with Gif’s.. That’s what everyone is doing these days — right?